Sunday, August 31, 2008

A work session at Strong and Whispers's place Friday afternoon turned into an incredible writing retreat. We worked and partied with determination and vengeance; it was an amazing time. I love working with people. It felt great to be surrounded by really stellar individuals working and supporting in each other in our endeavors, and we all got a lot done. I'm hoping that we can do it again next weekend, though maybe not to such an extreme. My clock is totally fucked now.

We got up late yesterday after an evening of serious boozeness, had a gigantic meal around three, and worked until we had to go back out for dinner at 11 p.m., which is when things got a little weird. At dinner we were all loopy on productivity and I got a text from Curly, one of the two boys I'd met at keets' party a few weeks ago. Since I was in the burg already, he said he'd come meet up with us for drinks. I was pretty surprised to hear from him, and I could not finish my dinner out of excitement. I was so excited that I almost forgot that I hadn't showered in a while and I was smelling pretty rank.

Per my usual m.o., I swallowed two drinks before Curly showed up--yes, with the other boy, Red. This confused the hell out of me, seeing as Curly and Red were the two guys whose numbers I had gotten and then gotten confused. This shouldn't have been so confusing, because it's not like I was trying to specifically get with either of them, but it definitely threw me for a loop. I was even more confused when Curly disappeared, and Red ended up hanging out at S&W's until about six a.m.

Suddenly we found ourselves in a convertible hurtling on the BQE. It was sunny, beautiful, warm, and we wound up in Astoria, then in East Flatbush drinking rum at 8 a.m. with a former Gap model from the Ivory Coast. He tried to pressure me into a drinking contest, not even kidding, and for some reason I got all salty about this. It was a while before I remembered that I could Just Say No.

I finally made it back to my place at 1 p.m. and slept for a few hours, waking up to a text from Red inviting me to hang out before what I'm sure will be another night of The Booze. I go dry on Tuesday, so I'm succumbing to all of my alcoholic urges to do as much liver damage as possible before then.

What should I wear tonight?

*

(20 hours later)

I'm having one of those days where I alternately feel like a pretty princess and a crack whore. Such extremes! Such dualism! So much confusion. I want to talk to Girlfriend so badly that I can't call her. I just want to lie here and wait for it to go away.

Red's party was fun. I stopped by to get Lucho to be my escort, but he was sidelined by cute new neighbors. It was nice to see My Friend, whom I've missed and haven't seen all summer. As soon as I saw him I realized I'm still secretly in love with him, this after not having spoken to him since the night I peed on a car in Park Slope at the end of May.

Because I was so tired I decided to aim for a tequila-based BAC of around 2.3. Curly showed up with a girl. I'm so attracted to him it's ridiculous, but with his girl there, it was easy to be distracted by other nice people. I felt pretty princessy because boys were being sweet to me and crack whorey because I haven't added up to a night's full sleep in a few days.

I made the following note to myself on my cell phone: Some line of desperation carried me back to Brooklyn after little sleep. Commuting soothed me like sleep--purposeful, undisturbed. Something like work in respite and observation, the marriage of necessity and dreams.

What is this craze in my blood, this craze that needs to be tempered with booze and constant motion? It's a buzzing that I have to follow or it will tell me I'm sad, in both the pathetic and miserable ways. I follow it; since I have no choice, I try to enjoy it.

Keets advised me to stay away from a certain boy who was uber-focused on me, so I turned my attention to the sweet boy who kept sticking cocaine up my nose. I followed him home around 6 a.m. and let him love on me. He was amazingly endearing and softspoken for a boy with so much blow in his pocket. This morning we talked about the DSM over coffee, and I remembered that Gap model too had a strong interest in clinical psychology; it was the second time the DSM had come up in conversation in 24 hours.

I suddenly remembered the flurry of text messages Gap model had sent me while I was maintaining my target BAC on Red's roof. I hadn't said yes or no to him, and at that moment I told him no. I thought of the last time I'd boy-hopped with such intensity and a sick feeling of regret and desire filled me. This happens any time I say no.

I don't understand why the things I do sometimes feel so right and other times so wrong.

Sunday, August 17, 2008

I am sick of being single, I am leering at babies, and I am not happy about either of these things. I don't know what to do about it, because I am basically attracted to EVERYONE and their best friends, brothers, roommates, cousins. It's kind of gross. I don't know when I turned into such a drunken floozy, but the transition has been kind of a good time.

This week I've been especially faced with the gross realization that I am a shameless flirt, which could explain a lot: why I'm single, why I love to drink so much, and why I always attract the wrong sort of guys. Above all, it explains why I confuse people so much. For most people, flirting is the precursor to serious business like sex and relationships, and for me it's more like an end in and of itself. Flirting is about all the interpersonal engagement I can handle these days.

I got some phone numbers last night (great party, keets!) and someone has been texting me today. With some help, I am trying to figure out if it is this guy who I thought was so so cute or this other guy with whom I had a crazy connection and would probably be someone I could marry. (what did I just say? what?) But that is the way I am feeling about EVERYONE lately. I could love you forever! Stay away.

The farewell to The Ex may have something to do with my rage against singledom this week. My friend and I were talking yesterday about how it hurts to be around exes when you're single, because that person has a piece of your heart, and your heart wants to reclaim it, make itself whole again, whenever it gets near that piece. Kind of like magnets I guess. This made a lot of sense to me. At the same time, you don't want the piece back, because you gave it to them, and you want them to have it. But the ache is still there. It's not as bad when you're attached, because someone has given you a piece of their heart, and it helps to fill that void.

You know what else helps? Escalating quantities of booze. Except then the next day you get to hang out with your hangover all day, and think about why you are single.

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

In my few minutes of working Internet, let me just holla from the rooftops that

I LOVE SUMMER '08 IT IS THE BEST!

Just got back from a lovely weekend in The Cape. Bet you didn't know I was so glamorous did ya? Well I'm not. I just happen to have glamorous friends who are okay with me showing up looking like vomit. The weekend involved many seafoods dipped in butter, cheering from the sidelines, feeling like an outsider, feeling beloved, and boating with the yellyfish. How did I find this life?

The better my life gets, the more afraid I get of losing it. And by "it," I mean both my mind and this awesome life. I know it's coming--this awesome life, not my mind--because summer is drawing to a close, and I am already thinking to myself "ohmygodnextyearihavetogetajobohgodihateworking!!!!" But I'm getting ahead of myself here. Right now I gotta concentrate on fixing the things I promised I'd fix when I got to The NY.

Some of this came up when I was in The Chi last week for my little brother's birthday. Moms likes to ask me what I'm doing with my life, which makes me sad because I don't know. Then I decided to unburden myself by telling her My Dirtiest Secret, that I'm still a smoker, to which she just sighed and said, "I know."

Talk about anticlimax. I told her partially because I was fiending and sick of lying about it, and then I was able to go and enjoy the company of my most cancerous friend. But then the rest of the time I smoked significantly less. I think I'm on the road to recovery.

My friend Knockout, who is swapping coasts this week, also has similar boozeness issues to mine, and we have decided to do a month of sobriety, starting the day after Labor Day. Oh hell! It makes me feel like an alcoholic because just the idea of it terrifies me.

I'm just chattering while I await my afternoon at the beach with The Ex, who is visiting this week around a job thingy of his. We hung out last week and it was...nice. And by nice, I mean it was wonderful to see him but also soul-crushing, which evens out to...nice. When I'm around him I just want to climb on top of him and lick his face. This was always a point of contention between us, because he's not into my clingy tendencies. I honestly have to fold my hands on my lap sometimes to avoid grabbing him. Either that, or I chain smoke to keep myself out of his hair, another habit of mine which he hates. All in all, it is good that we are separated by three time zones, because it keeps the sadness at bay. At the end of our relationship, my biggest take-away from it is that I promised him I would always be there for him, and I am trying not to make our breakup the end of that promise.

Friday, August 1, 2008

The Boys are pissing me off this week, and even more irritating is my Handling of Them. I went to a farrrbulous wedding this past weekend: yes, I did just say a fab wedding. It was actually twenty-four hours of fun, so take note, people: it is possible.

At said wedding, however, I got roped into a seemingly endless conversation where he trapped me into giving him my phone number. He was a nice enough guy, but totally self-absorbed. I was into him at all, but I was sober and I can’t lie when I’m sober, so I gave him my number.

Homeboy has called me EVERY FUCKEN DAY since Sunday. When will this stop? I have yet to pick up or return a single call. The messages were kind of rude. One of them was like, “SERIOUSLY. Call me and tell me when the best time is to reach you.” Right, dude, the only reason why I haven’t returned your calls is because we haven’t found the right time yet. Then this morning—I kid you not—he calls me at ten to seven in the morning, and left me another message about maybe I was a morning person? Please stop fucking calling me. Isn’t there a rule about the number of unanswered phone messages a person can leave before entering the legal realm of stalkerdom?

Then last night was the worst. I went on a date with this guy who I didn’t know at all. This guy chased me out of a bodega in the neighborhood and last night we went out to dinner. I should have known there were going to be problems from the beginning because when I said I was free Wednesday, he asked me, “Do you go spinning?”

I said, “Spinning? Like at a gym?” Color me disgusted as he invites me to a spinning class. La-a-a-a-me.

No, we did not go spinning together. But we did go have a night of serious boozeness. Okay, here’s how the night went wrong. Literally on our first drink, he kissed me, on the lips, without warning or asking. I couldn’t even get out of the way. I…think that’s wrong. I didn’t like that one bet. Throughout the night he kept kissing me and I could not make it stop. Seriously, dude? What’s up with that?

He was a nice enough guy, though. He brought me a rose. We had a nice dinner. He was holding my hand, too! On a first fucken date? Really? I didn’t know how to be like, “Please don’t touch me” without being too much of a bitch, so I just went along with it.

Then, fast forward a few hours and much boozeness later, he’s trying to come into my apartment with me. I said, “NonoNO you’re not coming up. I’m not sleeping with you.” But he was really fucken insistent that he see me upstairs, and of course we end up having sex and while it’s not bad, I didn’t want to have sex with him, and shit just happened. The weirdest part about it was that homeboy had a VIBRATING COCK RING with him. Who the hell carries a vibrating cock ring around with them? Man, that was a shocker.

This morning he pulled the “I’m going to fuck you awake” tactic, and I was like “Get the hell off of me, dude.” Then he practically begged for sex. God, what is more pathetic than that? The bed was a bloody mess; I was pissy; there was a dude in bed with me who I was hating more and more with each passing moment.

All of this shadiness made me miss Joe, who always asked me if he could even put his arm around me, let alone kiss me. Why did I put up with this behavior last night? Is booze really to blame? Why do I let guys just have their way with me, only to feel like crap about it later? Thoughts, anyone?

And now, another person whose calls I’m going to have to dodge. Thank you Jesus for caller ID.